05/24/2013

Living on Abokobi's illegal landfill

By Abby Wiseman

Adelaide
pulls out one of her large lactating breasts and plunks it into the mouth of
her 10 month old baby while she shares her story of how she came to live on the
fringe of the Abokobi garbage dump in Accra.

Plastic
bottles, cans and plastic bags from the dump creep up to her porch.

The
pungent smell of burning rubber and plastic is so strong that my stomach drops
every few minutes and I tell myself to stick it out. I can leave this place,
Adelaide can’t.

The
dump is located on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital city. Outskirts does not
mean uninhabited, and Abokobi is clearly a residential area.

When
Pearl Akanya Ofori, the reporter I work with at CitiFM,
said she wanted to do a report on the Abokobi dumpsite, I figured we might find
people who live and work on the site. They might live in a shack or on the side
of the road I thought. The last thing I thought I’d see was properly erected
homes. I didn’t expect to see an entire village close to the dump, completely
engulfed in toxic smoke.

But
in my amazement the community is growing and someone is even building a large
house Kitty-corner to the dumpsite. Construction workers labour in the smog.

Adelaide
said she moved to her new home with a view of never ending garbage trucks in
March. She said that her last landlord evicted her mother, brothers and sisters
from their home in Adenta, a nearby neighbourhood. She said a friend told her
she could live near the dump. She said she pays rent, but couldn’t tell us how much.

The
smoke is suffocating and she said she often has to leave her house just to
clear her eyes. Her youngest coughs on and off for hours sometimes she said.
There’s a hospital up the street, but she doesn’t think she should go.

Adelaide
does not live at the dump alone. There are many incomplete houses in the
neighbourhood, their brick and mortar foundation still showing. This seems to
be a trend in Accra.

A
path weaves between the houses and we follow it into a clearing where a group
of young men hang out next to a rusty bench press.

These
are the bolla pickers. Bolla means garbage in Twi, which is a local language.

We
ask if they will speak to us. They lead us to their unofficial spokesman,
Abrantie. That’s not really his name, but means young man in Twi. He was
worried about his livelihood and didn’t want to reveal his real name.

Abrantie
travelled from the northern region of Ghana in hopes of more opportunity. He
didn’t have the skills to survive in a city and found himself picking from the
top of the burning bolla.

He
said the work is hot and dangerous, and the bolla is unstable.

The
bolla pickers sell their bits of plastic and water bottles to middle men who
then sell it to a recycling plant or abroad. The most money he has earned for
his efforts is 50 Ghana Cedis ($25 CDN), and that was for two weeks worth of
work.

Right
now he is managing a drink stand the men have set up. He said he needed a
break, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before he has to go back up onto
the bolla.

Looking
at the mountain of refuse, figures of men can be made out through the smoke.
They walk on top of the garbage, bending down to pick up recyclable trash,
dodging the shovels that sift the pile.

I
ask Abrantie and the other men how they feel health-wise. He doesn’t mention
his bad lungs or burning eyes until I asked him about those health concerns
directly. Instead, he spoke about stress. He said they can’t feel too good,
because they don’t know where their next “daily bread” will come from.

I
think on these men and what their lives must be like. I can’t help but wonder
where they get comfort and love. Their lives are so challenging with so little
certainty. They have very little to offer a woman and they have no family in
the area.

The
men crowded around Abrantie as he spoke about the stress. I asked them who
takes care of them. They said they take care of each other. They are brothers.
The brothers of the bolla.

Posted by Robin Pierro at 01:38:40 PM

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